Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence is an album released by the progressive metal band Dream Theater. It is considered one of the most important works in thermodynamics in the early 21st century. It introduces a new mathematical model designed to replace the outdated classical ideal gas laws. It is based around the turbulence observed in a three-dimensional gassy environments, which is used to model any continuum mechanics system with six degrees of freedom.

The model consists of only six pieces, so at the time of its publication it was considered too short to qualify for a full-length scientific work, and had to be released as an EP. Its release was surrounded by controversy because it challenged many of the mainstream scientific dogmas of the time and it was followed by religious protests from many scientists who believed in the classical ideal gas teachings.

Pieces

The model is divided into six pieces, each portraying a different scientific experiment.

The Glass Prison

The cover of the single featuring The Glass Prison

The first piece, named The Glass Prison, is one of the heaviest experiments ever performed by Dream Theater, and deals with the life of a goldfish imprisoned in an aquarium. It explores the distress the the fish experiences from living locked up. This is the first time when a link between the turbulence in a fluid and the psychological turbulence of a creature submerged in the fluid has been established. PETA have attacked the experiment as excessively cruel, and have stated that fish should never be kept in aquariums, citing the goldfish's opinion on her imprisonment.

“ Help me - I can't break out this prison all alone / Save me - I'm drowning and I'm hopeless on my own / Heal me - I can't restore my sanity alone ”

—The Goldfish on Her Imprisonment

The experiment leader Mike Portnoy has stated that PETA's claims are ill-founded, and that the results are of exceptional significance for science. This piece has been released as a single.

Blind Faith

Blind Faith is the most controversial of the pieces, as it breaks the tenets of orthodox science. It directly attacks the blind faith in classical science, proposes an apocryphal model to establish a turbulence-particle duality in ideal gas, and even goes to the length of painting its own Mona Lisa. Distribution and discussion of the piece has been prohibited in throughout the world, and is considered a capital offense. James LaBrie, who was involved in its creation, has been expelled from the scientific community, which has forced him to work as a cow milker since.

Misunderstood

Like The Glass Prison, Misunderstood is about putting animals in the slammer. It tells us about a lion that is being led to a cage, causing him to get entrapped in a circle of confusion, and subsequently develop a reverse-superiority complex and get misunderstood by everyone. This experiment provoked no backlash, because the animal right activists were reportedly unable to understand what the lion was fucking talking about. It has provided no useful scientific results either, because nobody has been able to figure them out yet. John Petrucci, who was leading the experiment, has refused to comment.

The Great Debate

Originally named The Conflict at Ground Zero, the fourth piece dealt with the construction of a huge secret particle accelerator sprawling under New York and Pennsylvania lead by Dream Theater that would rival the LHC. Unfortunately, the launch of the accelerator went wrong, and nearly lead to the destruction of the Solar System, so the whole piece had to be renamed to The Great Debate, and the gory details were to be left out.

The final version goes into a lengthy discussion of the implications that particle accelerators pose to mankind, and features exclusive eyewitness reports of the accident.

“ Turn to the light / Don't be frightened of the shadows it creates / Turn to the light / Turning away would be a terrible mistake ”

—Particle accelerator cleaner about the launch

John Petrucci has been sentenced to six months without access to guitars for endangering the world and the universe. Later the charges were overturned as they were ruled excessive and inhumane.

Disappear

Disappear is another attempt by James LaBrie to create a controversial piece, discussing concepts such as disappearing days, but it has since been accepted that he has managed to create a lullaby.

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

To avoid another confrontation with animal activists, Dream Theater decided to use humans instead for their last experiment. They gathered together a bipolar schoolgirl, a traumatized soldier, a schizophrenic John Petrucci wannabe, a depressed mother, an autist and a woman immune to identity theft, put them all in the same room, and left them there for a week to see what will happen.

It was expected that this would provide them with interesting results about fluid turbulence in closed spaces, but for unexplained reasons things didn't go as planned. After their first visit to the test subjects, John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy started to believe they were a polka band. They decided to write the whole piece exclusively for accordion and clarinet. The result wasn't well accepted in the polka circles due to Portnoy's attempts to do blast beats on the accordion.

Numerological controversy

Along with the scientific controversy, and the animal controversy, some experts in numerology are worried that the work might make allusions to the number of the beast. It consists of six pieces, there were six individuals gathered for the last experiment, and the band consisted of six scientists. It should also be noted that had it been released as a full-length scientific work, it would be the sixth one by the band. This has led to numerous protests, and the band has been banned in several countries.

Personnel

• James LaBrie - AAAAAAAAA!
• John Myung - bass, posing
• John Petrucci - guitar, clarinet on Track 6
• Mike Portnoy - air drums, accordion on Track 6
• Jordan Rudess - keyboards, test-tubes
• Weird Al Yankovic - himself